The Howard County Library and 40 community partners in the "Choose Civility" initiative - an effort to make the county a national model of respect, consideration, empathy and tolerance - will sponsor a program on self-interest and societal interests, "Why Looking Out for Number One Doesn't Work."
The seminar, which teaches conflict-resolution techniques, will be at 7 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Central Library, 10375 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. Candace A. Olds of Howard Community College's Conflict Resolution Center will speak.
If "looking out for number one" does not work, then please explain to me how all the magnificent advances in technology are the result of the profit motive, and how government has not produced one single innovation anywhere. Virtually every single thing that makes our modern day quality of life so high is the result of individuals each pursuing their separate interests.
Buried in the foolish title of this seminar is the notion that self interest is not enlightened enough to realize that a transaction that makes "Number One" better off will also make other parties to the transaction better off (absent the use of force or coercion, which by the way is how the government does things).
8 comments:
Are you irritating on purpose? There are so many good libertarian positions, and you pick smut to defend, and say things like government never did anything innovative (um, NASA?).
Gov't money funds innovative R&D for both govt projects and private industry. That is why people like Pickens are trying to get the govt' to back energy independence.
Instead of paying 700B+ to slimey wall street criminals to get massages, we should have spent it on infrastructure and created good paying jobs here in this country using some of the world's top engineers to design innovative solutions.
Instead of paying 700BILLION to the most sleazy lying component of our economy we could have supported auto change-over to hydro or nat gas.
Why aren't you angry about the 700B? Say something! It marks the formal end of our capitalist economy.
If all libertarians are this nit picky - swallowing elephants and choking on fleas, no wonder you can't get heard.
Anon, don’t get your panties in a bunch. If actually read this blog you would know that I did write about the $700 billion bailout and –spoiler alert- I am strongly opposed to it. So before you tell me to “say something” about the bailout, perhaps you should open your eyes and read what I have already written. Secondly, there are thousands of examples of wasteful government spending other than the bailout. A few examples are farm subsidies, the war in Iraq, Social Security (which will go broke in my lifetime), the war on drugs, etc. Who do you think you are to criticize me for choosing what I want to write about? I sometimes want to stick to local issues.
Furthermore, I would be just as opposed to spending the $700 Billion on converting cars to hydrogen or natural gas as I would be to spending the $700 Billion on a bailout. I am shocked that people like yourself see the foolishness of wasting money on bailing out Wall Street, yet you think that the economy could be juiced by spending the money instead on new sources of energy. You are just as guilty as politicians for thinking that you are smarter than the market and believing that if you could just reallocate expenditures to certain areas (like alternative energy) that you would make us better off. In fact, this will only make us poorer. It is the government’s desire to get everyone into a house that got us into this financial mess in the first place.
With respect to innovations that were funded by the government, I’ll concede that innovations have been produced in this manner. However, they were produced without regard to a common sense cost benefit analysis. The British and French governments produced innovation by subsidizing the development of the Concorde. Who benefited? Private airlines and wealthy air travelers, not the taxpayers of those nations. The space race was largely funded to demonstrate our superiority over other nations, not to achieve innovations with market value that would make us better off. Please explain to me how an elected official has any more knowledge of what research should be funded than those who privately fund research.
Your simple way of looking at government spending ignores the underlying force and coercion of the American people that makes such spending possible.
Looking out for number one works fine in a lot of areas, but is altruism one of them?
DM- altruism and self interest are not mutually exclusive. I am self interested, but I donate money (and even blood) to private charities. I am interested in living in a society that treats animals well and has an adequate supply of blood for those in need, therefore I donate. However, the seminar that sparked this post is about conflict resolution, not altruism.
FM - "Your simple way of looking at government spending ignores the underlying force and coercion of the American people that makes such spending possible."
Let me fix that for ya:
Your simple way of looking at government spending ignores the underlying support of the American people that makes such spending possible.
Democracy's a bitch sometimes.
Anon, will you please use your head? If the American people want to invest in alternative energy, they will do so without help from the government. When people want the government to invest in alternative energy, that means that they want to invest in alternative energy with other peoples money, not their own. Thus, we have force and coercion.
Democracy is like capitalism, only it relies on political self interest rather than economic self interest.
Anon is obviously one of those people who doesn't understand the irony of schools forcing volunterrism on students as a pre-requisite to gradutate. Similarly, he/she doesn't understand the concept of government not interfering in the market. The goverment should not be in the business of influencing the market whether through "investments" or encouraging or discouraging competition in certain sectors. Inevitably, the government will (1) get it wrong and cause problems, and (2) they end up playing favorites with certain companies or businesses to the detriment of others.
The government is not a business. When I hear people say they support government programs that make a "profit" for the government (such as housing subsidy programs whereby the government ends up owning a portion of a house), I cringe. Private sector businesses should never ever have to worry about competing with government. That's a recipe for disaster.
There is more than one anon posting here.
I'm the irritated anon who posted initially.
Griping about good gov't programs while they are obliterating any semblance of capitalism is incomprehensible.
I'm veritably speechless at the outrageous govt behavior and the lame response here.
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